Strategic Defense Initiative

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system designed to protect the United States from ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. It existed from 1984 to 1993, and it was created by President Ronald Reagan to end the "suicide pact" of mutually assured destruction and to serve as an advanced space weapons program. The SDI was controversial, with US Senator Ted Kennedy calling it "Star Wars" after the 1977 space film, and its critics claiming that it would start an arms race. By 1987, the technologies considered were decades away from use, and, with the end of the Cold War and the vast reduction of military arsenals, political support for SDI collapsed and it was officially ended by President Bill Clinton in 1993.